Best Practices Guide

If you have a jointer and planer that weighs more than 1,000 lbs. and you want to slide it around in your shop, do like German engineer Matthias Burger: lay down railroad track in your shop floor, weld light rail wheels to the jointer, and voila. . .

There's an app for everything including some of your tools. These downloads aren't always professional caliber, but they are handy, and best of all, most are free, from companies like Stanley, Autodesk, and Benjamin Moore.

Since I started milling lumber, determining the difference between red oak and white oak has been a challenge. I’ve got a good handle on it now, but there are plenty of times (at least once a week) when a customer has a piece of wood that they want to identify. It is usually some old barn lumber and usually some sort of oak.

Home Improvement companies have to assess different leads. It is crucial for a business to determine which lead to pursue because they must develop a relationship with the homeowner. Gaining the homeowners trust means they are more willing to to agree to higher quality materials or larger projects.

There seems to be a huge amount of voodoo involved in setting up segmented platen sanding machines. Techs and the folks running them just don’t understand the concepts, so they just play with the settings until something looks okay.